Recent reviews by goka9696

New update bad lol

Game now requires a EGS account to play, even in singleplayer. I am unable to play it anymore.

Game with nearly zero redeeming qualities. Devs should be paying others to play it instead of demanding money for it. Valheim doesn't respect the player's time at all. Character stats are pitiful, even after eating a full 3-course meal your char will run out of stamina in mere seconds. Grind for items is atrocious, animals, enemies and even natural drops like trees barely provide you with any materials. A lot of animals / enemies are also very rare which exacerbates the issue even further. Building feels very clunky and crafting mechanics overall are badly designed. A lot of items require additional items to be placed nearby for them to even function, which results in you have to do build bases that are not aesthetically pleasing in the slightest and are completely immersion breaking, such as building a campfire behind a wall of your house so your character can actually sleep, or having to place a chopping block inside the building right next to the workbench for it to actually provide any bonuses. Everything ends up looking cluttered and out of place. Unlocking new recipes also feels awful, you don't have a skill or research tree, instead you unlock new crafting recipes and items by either building upgrades for the workbench or by just finding items in the wild. While upgrades are somewhat understandable, having to randomly get lucky with item drops or what you find feels awful.

The only thing I can praise is that online seems to work fine and to my knowledge Valheim doesn't have tethering, something that other games in the genre such as Ark and Conan Exiles struggle with. But otherwise I can't recommend it at all. V Rising or the aforementioned Ark and Conan are in my opinion all much better survival games as far as PvE is concerned.

Unbelievably horrible controls. I haven't played the original, but if it also played like this I'm surprised this game ever got a sequel at all.

Ghostrunner 2 feels weird. It's a bigger game in practically every way. Most levels are bigger, almost every level introduces some new enemy or mechanic, with some of them not appearing anywhere else, so gameplay is never stale, almost all old enemies make an appearance (the only one I can't remember coming back is the sniper) with new ones added in as well. Gameplay is as fun as its always been, with the new upgrade system being much easier to use and allowing you make Jack far stronger and faster than his GR1 iteration.

And yet, despite all of that, I can't help but feel like the game is worse. I've encountered many more bugs than in the first game, it's shorter than the first one despite having bigger levels, one of which can last for nearly an hour on your first playthrough, game is also less challenging, which being one of the main selling points is certainly a questionable decision. Graphics don't feel like much of an improvement, mainly it's the character models that got the most touches, and yet the game runs worse than the original. I'm running the game on SSD and I often get stutters between combat arenas, though this seems to happen only in specific levels. The last 2 levels (not counting the very last boss one) also had some framerate issues which didn't feel justified at all.

Bosses are also a mixed bag. On one hand, they're actual bosses now instead of puzzles. They have proper healthbars you can whittle down with your attacks or special abilities, and overall allow for a much more aggressive style of play. On the other hand, the first and last boss feel very similar to each other, with third boss being forgettable outside of his appearance. The only really interesting boss is the worm you fight on a bike, but that one has issues I'll explain when I get to the bike itself. Overall while bosses overall play like actual boss-fights now, I can't help but feel like the first game had more memorable fights even though it had less of them and they were glorified puzzles or rhythm game sections.

Level design is also questionable. The first game is full of non-stop action, any time you're not fighting you're listening to the story dialogue or doing some light platforming puzzles. The second game did add many more platforming puzzles and platforming overall is a more important part of the game, with the player being forced to use their special abilities a few times instead of simply jumping around, however, there's also a lot of downtime. While levels are bigger on average, nearly half of your playtime on some of the levels will be spent simply traversing the environment or solving simple puzzles with no challenge or threat to you. Bike sections in particular suffer from this. I must say that Cybervoid is an improvement though. It flows much better and is much more varied than the cybervoid in the first game.



Speaking of the bike. Its introduction is certainly impressive. You move fast, it handles very well and you can slash and fire on top of it. However, bike sections often don't communicate very well where you're supposed to go, so you might have to go through a lot of trial and error just to memorize the correct route. Compounding the issue is the absolutely atrocious FOV on the bike when moving upwards. Any time Jack is riding up, be it on a wall or inside the aforementioned worm boss, more than half of the screen is taken up by the bike itself. It can be hard or nearly impossible to see where you're actually going, so situations where the moment camera realigns itself you're suddenly staring at a wall or a moving obstacle are not rare at all. The game's description also boasts about "nonlinear levels with complex motorbike sections", but really, the only truly nonlinear level is the one where you're thrown in a big deserted city environment and have to go to 3 towers to activate them. Almost the entire time you're there the only threat is accidentally hitting a wall from going too fast. On my first run of this level it took me approximately 14 deaths to beat it, and that run took me nearly 40 minutes. Even if we cut out the time I spent looking for hidden collectables, which include upgrade points that you need to get new skills, I'm still confident that I wouldn't be lying if I said that half of that time, if not more, was spent on moving through empty, barren environments. That level is boring, tedious, and feels like it exists to justify the bike's existence and to boast that the game has "nonlinear levels".

Platforming also feels strange. A lot of the time it felt like the game wanted me to use various techniques that aren't really taught by the game to progress, such as using the slowdown mid-air to strafe closer to my target or using dash-slide technique before jumping. Otherwise a lot of the time it felt like my character would fail to make it to the other platform or wall and would plummet to his death. Though maybe it's just me.

The soundtrack is overall good, but not really much better or worse than the original.

The game also introduced the "roguerunner" mode, a semi-roguelike where you go through 4 stages, each of which consists of different routes you can take, including nodes like parkour challenges, arenas, shops to get upgrades, etc. You have a limited number of lives, and if you run out of them, you lose the progress and start again with nothing carrying over. Levels aren't randomly generated, so after some time you will start seeing similar stages, but it's a fine distraction. I do hope they add the survival mode from the first game at some point (though I'd prefer it not to be part of the season pass).

The story is alright, I'm not a fan of the new supporting character you spend most of the game with, and there are some weird story points that I'm unsure about namely Bakunin just magically coming back being the biggest offender, but maybe I just missed the explanation, all I remember is him simply mentioning off-hand that a HEL unit got him, which is exactly what happens in the GR1 DLC , but overall story is fine for pushing the player forward. I did like it more in the first game, but neither of them is really about the story, it's just there to keep the player going.

Overall I certainly do like Ghostrunner 2, it's a fun game that I will continue playing for a while trying to get better results in missions, however, it didn't leave as much of an impression on me as the first game did, and I feel like developers tried too hard to make their next game "bigger and better" and didn't quite stick the landing.

It's an hour long lol

An amazing action RPG that is capable of standing side by side with the best titles in the genre, and if we were to compare it to Fromsoft titles, frankly better than most of the stuff they've released in recent years.

Great performance without a single technical issue, framerate drop or bug, good controls even on KB/M (which I used to beat the game), good variety of enemies, huge amount of weapons each with a unique moveset, no two weapons are the same (though special moves do sometimes repeat), with weapon customization allowing you to combine different blades and handles which creates even bigger variety and allows you to truly make a weapon for your own playstyle. Beautiful graphics and art direction. Well written story and characters.

Frankly the few gripes I do have with the game (lack of optional content and overall linearity, a few enemies / bosses feeling a bit overtuned, heavy weapons being a far worse option than lighter ones) are small nitpicks compared to everything the game does well. Game running perfectly with zero issues and having no noticeable bugs is just a cherry on top. A contender for game of the year and is certainly one of the best titles to be released in this genre in the past few years.

This game is horrid.

Age of Wonders 4 has a solid foundation. I personally never found Planetfall or 3 to be particularly enjoyable to play (I also found 3 to be very ugly), and I never gave 1 or 2 a try, so 4 is the first AoW title I put considerable time in. However, most of this time was spent in a burst shortly after the game came out, and then I lost interest fairly quickly.

While game has a lot of customization options and I personally don't mind that races are no longer set in stone allowing the player pretty much complete freedom in their creation, no matter what you do they ultimately start becoming a formless mass when you actually start playing the game unless you go heavy on roleplaying and only get techs that would really fit the specific race you made rather than what would be beneficial in the actual game. As a result, while my first ~50 hours were a lot of fun, at some point I hit a wall and my interest in the game nosedived pretty much instantly.

Game also has some QoL issues that make it less enjoyable, for example, only 3 stacks can participate in combat at any given time, and whenever fight begins you can't choose which stacks you want to participate, the game does it for you. Usually it tries to choose the strongest available stacks, but if you have a specific strategy in mind this might ruin it. This also heavily incentivizes using only high tier units in your late game armies, completely ignoring any of the low-mid tier units unless they bring some utility, such as heals or AOE attacks.

That said, I checked AoW 3 reviews and forums and a few threads on AoW 4's hub and apparently the third game also suffered from a lot of issues and was improved massively with patches, so I hope developers can make the game more enjoyable and interesting in the long run.

I haven't tried multiplayer, but from what I've seen it has a lot of stability issues, and AI isn't much of a challenge, so game is mostly enjoyable if you want to create your own story with your own faction(s). I personally did enjoy this aspect and the fact that whenever you win the game you can ascend your hero to a Pantheon and make them appear in future games, in addition to getting various new unlocks such as new origins or outfits are both positives for me. Take this as a very cautious recommend. I might update this review when more DLCs come out.

Important note: The only Armored Core game I played prior to 6 is For Answer, and that was a long time ago as a kid so I barely remember it. For all intents and purposes my experience with 6 is completely fresh and is more or less a new player's experience.

Armored Core 6 is overall a very fun ride. Game has huge variety of equipment pieces, a lot of different enemies requiring the player to stay on their toes, and good visuals. I particularly like all the little details in the environment and on your mech and weapons. NG+ is also worthy of praise. Those who have played the souls series might remember that the only game that really changed something about the NG+ was Dark Souls 2, but thankfully, Armored Core 6 goes even further than that, introducing new missions, bosses and equipment, and NG++ even has an entirely separate ending and final boss for the most dedicated of players. Every subsequent NG cycle reveals more about the story with twists around every turn.

However, while the game is very enjoyable overall, I do have an issue with balancing. It feels like Fromsoft either didn't really test bosses with a variety of builds, or didn't even bother adjusting them at all. Playing with a light mech most bosses aren't just challenging, which is understandable, but also absurdly tanky, taking a very long time to whittle down while being able to kill you in a matter of seconds. Compounding this issue is the stagger bar. Both you and your opponents, including bosses, can be stunned, with some weapons even being built specifically with building up the stagger bar in mind rather than damage, and when it's filled you or the enemy are stunned and take increased damage until the bar recovers. However, this is far more punishing for the player than the bosses. Unlike them, player can remain stunlocked for the entire duration, resulting in you taking potentially multiple hard-hitting attacks that take ~8000 health away, which for most light builds will either bring them to the brink of death or kill them outright. Bosses later on, however, recover very fast and don't really allow the player a lot of room to deal damage.

However, light builds are not the only option. You can put tank treads on your AC and get the heaviest armor and most powerful generator you can find, and put as many hard-hitting guns as you possibly can. This ends up throwing the challenge in the opposite direction. A build with 2 miniguns, 2 shoulder mounted stun lances and tank treads is capable of stunning bosses in seconds. In fact, while using this build I was able to kill most of the late game bosses in a minute at most, with only the final bosses of each route taking longer than that. All the while you also take less damage and have more HP to be able to actually tank said damage. Light and tank builds are not even remotely comparable in that regard.

Now, you can find builds that allow you to kill bosses efficiently with light builds, but most of them won't be as fast as the tank build, and even if they do, they can feel just as cheesy as the build I explained above. For example, you can get an agile AC that can run circles around the enemy and put 4 shotguns on it. Then simply keep swapping them when one needs to reload and you can deal a lot of damage and fill the enemy stun gauge quite fast. However, you are still at risk of an instant death if you get hit, and you won't be able to compete in the damage department with tanks due to lacking both the weight and the energy requirements for the most damaging weapons. You do unlock very powerful guns and missiles in NG+ and ++ cycles, but I am talking strictly about the first experience with each of them, rather than repeat playthroughs.

All of this isn't to say that Light Builds are completely worthless, I swapped to a lighter build in NG+ and have been enjoying my time with it as well, but it certainly feels like a downgrade when compared to the tank build I've been using prior to that.

Despite this long rant I'd still like to emphasize that I did enjoy the game a lot and do recommend it, but balancing is something to keep in mind if you plan on getting it.

For the record, these are the builds I have used in my playthroughs:

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3027608536

^Heavy build

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3027608555

^Light build, though I frequently swapped the main and shoulder guns for something else depending on the situation. I also eventually removed the shield and replaced it with another laser turret.